How to Have a Traditional African Style Wedding

African Marriage Customs Add Meaning to an African American Wedding

May 29, 2009 Norman Kolpas

From hair braiding to colorful textiles, cowry shells to warmly glowing embers, drumming to jumping the broom, there are many ways to celebrate African heritage weddings.

One of the best ways imaginable to personalize a wedding ceremony is to incorporate into the proceedings elements of the bride’s or groom’s cultural heritage. For wedding celebrants of African or African American heritage, a wealth of such wedding customs is available.

African Wedding Customs

Use the following traditional African wedding practices as a starting point to add such personal touches to a wedding ceremony being planned. Even one of them can make the exchange of vows a unique and memorable experience for black bride and groom alike.

Braiding. Throughout Africa, traditional brides and grooms may have their hair elaborately braided to mark the special occasion. Couples of African heritage may wish to observe their weddings in a similar way.
Carrying fire. Traditional South African weddings may feature the parents of the wedding couple carrying glowing embers from their own hearths during the processional, to be used for lighting the hearth of the newlyweds’ home. In modern African heritage weddings, these could be replaced by candles. A Unity Candle could symbolically stand in for the newlyweds’ hearth. In this modern-day American Protestant church ritual, the mothers of the bride and groom each respectively light one taper at the altar to begin the ceremony. Then, after vows and rings have been exchanged, the officiant asks the bride and groom to each take one of the tapers and, together, light the larger central Unity Candle. Thus, they symbolically take the lights of their single lives and jointly start a new, larger, brighter flame as a married couple. Some couples then extinguish the tapers, while others leave them lit as well to signify that they remain individuals while also being committed to married life.
Traditional colors and patterns. Vibrant African patterns, particularly in traditional colors such as red, black, and green, may be incorporated into both bride’s and groom’s wedding attire.
Cowry shells. These beautiful little shells, an ancient form of money in West Africa, may be used to adorn the bride as a symbol of good fortune, whether as jewelry or sewn on as decorations for the wedding gown.
Drums. Long a part of African tradition, rhythmic drumming may be incorporated into an African heritage wedding, either as an accompaniment to the processional or recessional, or as part of the celebration to follow.
Jumping the broom. People of many diverse cultures besides those of Africa—including Scotland, Hungary, and Gypsy cultures—include brooms among wedding rituals, particularly as a playful symbol of the bride’s housekeeping abilities and of the couple setting up a new home together. But for African-Americans the tradition has deeper, more poignant meaning. It harks back to pre-Civil War days, when slaves in the South were forbidden to marry, when the old African ritual of jumping over a broom together became a way of formalizing the commitment between a man and woman, and marking their “leap” into a new life together. In modern African-American weddings, couples may jump over the broom either to begin the ceremony or to conclude it after they’ve been formally pronounced husband and wife.

Whatever wedding traditions are included, may they help inspire a long, healthy, happy, and prosperous married life. (Want to learn about other wedding traditions? Check out How to Have a Hawaiian Wedding or How to Have a Traditional Hindu Wedding. Want advice on buying the ring? See How to Judge a Diamond’s Quality and Shape.)

The copyright of the article How to Have a Traditional African Style Wedding in Wedding Planning is owned by Norman Kolpas. Permission to republish How to Have a Traditional African Style Wedding in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Kente cloth can add flair to wedding attire.